Deflector Shields: Difference between revisions

no edit summary
m (update links)
No edit summary
Line 171:
* ''[[Star Ocean: Till the End of Time]]'' explains ship-based deflector shields has shunting energy to a theoretical dimension based on imaginary numbers.
* Shields feature prominently in ''[[Supreme Commander]]'', where they were originally reverse-engineered from an alien race by the Aeon, then stolen and copied by the UEF and Cybran Nation. All three factions have powerful stationary shield generators that project a spherical shield around their area, but the Aeon take things a step further with a number of units sporting personal shield generators that conform over the unit. The UEF also gets in on the personal shield idea with their siege bot and Fatboy-class [[Military Mashup Machine]], then adding in a naval-based shield generator in ''Forged Alliance''. The sneaky Cybrans only use shields in stationary defensive installations.
* In the old video game ''[[Scorched Earth]]'', you have choice between barriers absorbing incoming fire without explosions and bouncy one; the latter deflects missiles away from your tank, but slowly falling ones may still get you - sometimes the shield bubble even ends up filled with napalm. There's also antigravitic umbrella, which blows off course munitions falling from above, but not any good against shots to a side.
* In the old video game ''[[Scorched Earth]]'', in addition to normal energy shields, you could use a literal Deflector Shield which would deflect missiles off course from your tank.
* Magical force fields protect Ganondorf's castle in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]''. The only way to get by them is by destroying their [[No Ontological Inertia|corresponding core]].
** The trope started with ''[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link|Zelda II the Adventure of Link]]'', in which the final temple was sealed by a magic barrier that wouldn't lower until you had cleared all the other temples.
Line 198:
** The Shivan Destroyer Lucifer takes this [[Up to Eleven]]. Not only is it the only Destroyer-class warship ever to be equipped with shields, but it's also completely invulnerable against all forms of weaponry.
* In ''[[Air Rivals]]'', all player-piloted craft have a passive version that basically just gives more [[Hit Points]]. There is also a class-specific version that temporarily blocks all damage from missiles, bombs, and rockets.
* In ''[[Vega Strike]]'', "GraviElectroMagnetic" shields are necessary for any ship, and consume lots of energy, setting the low limit for reactor power. Segmented into 2, 4 or 8 sectors depending on the ship, station or turret type. The main limitation is that shields are disabled by activation of either spatial distortion drive, jump drive or [[Stealth in Space|cloak]], thus a cheap shot with missile (if it's lucky to not get knocked silly by ECM) or two may kill or cripple a strong enemy who just arrived and didn't recharge shields yet. However, while shields absorb point-for-point disruptors (working on the same principle) and plasma, many weapons (including [[Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better|all kinetics]] and otherwise weak lasers) can ''partially'' bypass shieldsthem.
* In the turn-based strategy game ''Mission Force: Cyberstorm,'' both [[Humongous Mecha|HERCs]] and [[Mecha-Mooks|Cybrids]] mounted energy shields. An active shield would stop projectiles entirely, but could be defeated with directed energy weapons, notably EMP-based systems.
* The Enclave apparently has access to "Photonic Resonance Barriers" in ''[[Fallout 3]]'', which they use to {{spoiler|block Project Purity and obstruct Liberty Prime during the final mission.}} "Probability of mission hindrance: '''ZERO PERCENT!'''"
Line 228:
* In ''[[War Front Turning Point]]'', one of the Allies' response to [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler]] and [[Soviet Superscience]] are force field tanks.
* ''[[Starflight]]'' allows the player to manually raise or lower shields, if installed. The reason you don't leave shields raised all the time is that doing so may be seen as a hostile gesture, just like having your weapons constantly armed.
* ''Stars!'' has shields that recover only between battles <ref>unless you choose [http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Regenerating_Shields Regenerating Shields] trait, in which case they regenerate 10% of the total each round, and their capacity is 40% greater in the first place, but armor components are halved</ref> and stop beam weapons point by point, but absorb only 1/2 of torpedo damage (plus 1/8 of damage from ''missed'' torpedoes). Shield generators are very light, but far weaker than armor of comparable [[Tech Level]] - of course, often slots are shield-only or armor-only anyway. Conversely, beam weapons always hit, have greater damage and are light (allowing greater mobility), but have lesser range, while torpedoes miss a lot. Shield's main advantage is ''stacking'' from the whole token (all ships of the same type in this fleet), so ''if there are enough of ships'', it takes twice as much to destroy the first one even with missiles. When there are much less, shields quickly become inferior to armor, which in turn usually is inferior to mounting more weapons (if the slot allows). This have obvious strategical implications: e.g. 1x shield + 2x torpedo destroyers are cheaper and ''stronger'' than their 3x torpedo counterpart... but ''only as long as you keep them in big enough packs'': e.g. with TL 0 shield and against TL 0 torpedo (but hull and armor at Construction TL 3) it takes 18 ships to fully use the advantage - neither you nor enemy are likely to have such fleets before a better design (which won't stack with them) is available; with shields on the same TL 3 in Energy it's 12, and with all TLs 6, it's only 9 ships. Later in the game both shields get better and fleets grow, so missiles become the main weapon again, despite introduction of both missile jammers and "shield sappers" that inflict even greater damage than other beam weapons, but only to shields (and shoot first, of course).
 
 
Line 258 ⟶ 259:
** HOWEVER, Red Alert had it right: the Soviets invented the system in the 70s, and even fielded it in Afghanistan (w/disastrous results - it worked too well, protecting the vehicle, but consistently blowing up shit'n'people all around it). Recently, the Russian army got its hands on version 2.0 (well, more like "dash-M", but that seems to be Russian military speak for 2.0 these days).
* Will always come up eventually during playtime for children, going something like this:
{{quote|Child 1: [Makes a missile sound effect and a boom, imitating it hitting the other child's [[Toys|toy]] tank/plane/etc]<br />
Child 2: [[Deflector Shield|Force field]]!<br />
Child 1: [[Calvin Ball|No force fields]]! }}